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The enemy gate is destroyed!

Possibly the best strategy game ever made, errybody loves Medieval II: Total War and it's expansion. Everyone. It's like $10 on steam right now, get it.

I've been playing as Venice. I'm gonna try to actually beat the game and then maybe play as the Danes or the Sicilians. I'm pounding my way against the HRE, Milan (I took Milan and Genoa, they're stuck in two shitty french castles), Hungary, and the Byzantine empire. I'm winning right now thanks to Venetian Heavy Infantry and Dismounted Feudal Knights. I'm also making like 6000 florins a turn because holy crap Venice is in a position to make stacks with enough merchants/merchants guilds.

I just started playing this!
I am hopelessly lost and have no idea whatsoever what I'm doing.
And the tutorial didn't help at all, it was just like "here are some menus which will confuse the fuck out of you, now go attack that city!"

The biggest dick move is to start as the Moors, rush Caravan Depots and flood Europe with camel gunners. Those guys with a bunch of experience are murder machines and dirty turnip pullin' Euros do not know what the fuck

I'm not too keen on doing the battle-map stuff, which wasn't such a big problem until I tried to conquer the Holy Land, which turned out to be chock full of Mongols. It turns out it's really, really hard to beat 10-star generals without any generals of your own, which means you won't get any more generals. 80 years and 30000 men later, I finally crushed the fuckers and then the Timurids showed up.

You just have to make them actually do things. Even lots of small pissant victories will boost a general's traits and huge arse-fucking defensive victories where you lose 150 goons to the attacker's 2600 will make a hard dude out of the most useless of pussies.

If you get a really shitty royal in your family, it's often better to move him out solo into the ocean and wait for a random pirate vessel to come over and fuck his day up. Sometimes you just have to prune the family tree.

I'm not too keen on doing the battle-map stuff, which wasn't such a big problem until I tried to conquer the Holy Land, which turned out to be chock full of Mongols. It turns out it's really, really hard to beat 10-star generals without any generals of your own, which means you won't get any more generals. 80 years and 30000 men later, I finally crushed the fuckers and then the Timurids showed up.

I cried.

I loved shit like this

Where I had to bleed sweat and tears for every provicne I took, where those of my men who survived were formed into elite units of savage bastards, where my generals were hardened, tough men who knew who to keep the local population in line.

The parts of the game where you are throwing everything into a war desperate to win, fighting every battle personally to squeeze as many surviving men out as you can, those are the best parts.

I'm not too keen on doing the battle-map stuff, which wasn't such a big problem until I tried to conquer the Holy Land, which turned out to be chock full of Mongols. It turns out it's really, really hard to beat 10-star generals without any generals of your own, which means you won't get any more generals. 80 years and 30000 men later, I finally crushed the fuckers and then the Timurids showed up.

I cried.

I loved shit like this

Where I had to bleed sweat and tears for every provicne I took, where those of my men who survived were formed into elite units of savage bastards, where my generals were hardened, tough men who knew who to keep the local population in line.

The parts of the game where you are throwing everything into a war desperate to win, fighting every battle personally to squeeze as many surviving men out as you can, those are the best parts.

This is exactly why I loved playing as the WRE in Barbarian Invasion. You basically get a crumbling empire thrown in your lap along with a countdown: get your shit together before the hordes arrive or die.

I've once beaten the crap out of the vandals with one half stack army filled with Palatine Guard, led by my ''best'' 3-star general. Four stacks of horse archers against that tiny army. If it wasn't for the bridge I was camping on I would've lost my campaign, but even with the bridge it was a hell of a tough fight. They'd pelt me with arrows before charging through, killing half the dudes around. Eventually they'd charge over and give the Guard a ton of experience. I believe all of the units were decimated but with atleast triple silver chevrons at the end of it. The general went from 3 stars to 8, along with a bunch of other combat related traits that made him a godlike figure.

It's so fun. When you start forming an army of guys that survive one campaign after another, and are just hardened bitter bastards with nothing but bloodlust, it's so awesome.

Then you throw your weak pawn troops at the enemy, specifically trying to knock out their archers or siege weapons. When they feel all good about themselves, then you bring your Immortals in to rape their soul.